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 Galas wrote:

 nordsturmking wrote:
Girlyman goes up in points from 360 to 385 ^^ i am sure that is not enough but a step in the right direction.

They should leave Guilliman costing as his cost now and give him 3 more wounds. Boom, fixed.

As someone who plays Tyranids, I can flatly tell you that this would make him unplayable.

Consider exhibit B, the Swarmlord. He's got those big wounds, but guess what, you are 2 failed saves away from being flat out dead.

If you're increasing Guiliman's wounds to above 9, he should go to 15 or 16, to be in line with the other primarchs.

Oh also, The Swarmlord should be upped to 18 wounds. Thanks for reading! XOXO MARMATAG

Hmm.. I don't think it will made him unplayable. With Honour guard tanking wounds from him and his hability to resurrect... it will be very hard, even for a competitive army to take him down in turn 1. And if they do... well... you have still the rest of your army.
I know, I know, Space Marines without Guilliman sucks, but thats a different problem that should be fixed.

I'll agree that the Swarmlord should be made more powerfull for his cost. It doesn't look as impresive as the ULTIMATE TYRANID BIO-WEAPON should be.

Daedalus81 wrote:

 Esmer wrote:
So Conscripts now cost the same as infantry, but with worse WS, worse BS, worse LD a 50 % chance of refusing orders and no weapon options?

What's the point in taking them, then?

When you want to overwatch with 30 mordians or a wall of meat with the same toughness and save as infantry. There plenty of reasons if you go and look for them.

You'd have to *really* look. In just about every case you're better off with just taking basic guardsmen. Mordian Conscripts are almost certainly not something that's going to be seen on any table, competitive or fluffy (conscripts have never really been a Mordian thing), you're still probably better off with basic Guardsmen and having additional weapons, better stats and more actions. You can get the wall of meat with basic guardsmen just fine.

grouchoben wrote:
I have a theory on GW's balance logic, and why they've gone all 'Exterminatus' on certain units...

Looking at Malefic Lord, Conscripts and Earthshaker Batteries, all three have featured heavily in top table lists recently. All three have been smashed in the face with the nerfbat so hard they're no longer worth taking, compared to their alternatives. Why not just recost them to be balanced?

I think it's because certain players invested a lot into these units in order to have a significant tournament advantage, and GW wants to make these players think twice before investing money and paint on what are obviously overpowered units in the future.

Players might think twice before doubling down on spam, knowing that soon the nasty bat will be out and swinging again. I'm not advocating it as a tactic myself, but it would make sense...

I don't think so. Those type of people just move onto the next broken thing. They did it when razorwings were nerfed, when stormravens were nerfed, when conscripts were first nerfed, etc. they don't care what gets nerfed, they go to whatever is mathematically the best choice regardless.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Daedalus81 wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:
Sarcastic assumptions of dart-throwing and coin-flipping aside, I wonder how GW actually decides point values. Is there some kind of formula based on stats that serves as a general guideline? Is it a result of a hierarchy that revealed itself in playtesting? I find it hard to believe that they're just randomly tweaking things around, even though the changes in Chapter Approved do really seem that arbitrary. In any case, it's impossible to form an objective opinion about any one of these changes without either knowing how GW assigns point values or having a bunch of statistical data about how each unit performs in different situations.

A little of both. You can easily see similar weapons on models with similar BS are getting near the same costs. You can look at tanks with the same toughness and save, but different wounds and find that the point per wound is proportional. And then you'll find things like conscripts that got hit, because they may still have been seeing high use on top of recently gaining bonuses from the codex.

TBH for all intents and purposes it doesn't seem like GW has a formula. They've never indicated any sort of math inclination or anything other than spitballing. One of the designers (I think it was Simon Grant) said on the twitch stream that he didn't use math, and that when Magnus first came out in like 7th edition they "playtested" him at like 400 points first. So it really sounds like they are coming up with something, playing a game with it and going from there, but not actually doing proper playtesting (i.e. not setting up actual situations to test things, just playing a game with the unit and seeing what happens). From the fragments I've heard from people who playtested 8th, their involvement was VERY limited, and it wasn't really testing interactions but more like "Here try these models against these models, tell us what happens".

 Vaktathi wrote:

Daedalus81 wrote:

 Esmer wrote:
So Conscripts now cost the same as infantry, but with worse WS, worse BS, worse LD a 50 % chance of refusing orders and no weapon options?

What's the point in taking them, then?

When you want to overwatch with 30 mordians or a wall of meat with the same toughness and save as infantry. There plenty of reasons if you go and look for them.

You'd have to *really* look. In just about every case you're better off with just taking basic guardsmen. Mordian Conscripts are almost certainly not something that's going to be seen on any table, competitive or fluffy (conscripts have never really been a Mordian thing), you're still probably better off with basic Guardsmen and having additional weapons, better stats and more actions. You can get the wall of meat with basic guardsmen just fine.

And give your opponent lots of kill points. This isnt even an option.

Dispite all this nerf's Valhalla Conscripts are still *usefull*. Take 3 full squards, add commander with a special relic pistol, that give moral immunity - and move it along the table. If someone gonna shoot at conscript - then thats good, coz that firepower wont power your better units. If someone will charge you - use Valhallan special order to kill everyone, who dares go in melee with you, along with the some of our own conscripts.

Also, Mordian Conscript blob + sabre defence searchlight + Folley Fire = 278 lasgun shots with BS4+ from one single unit. Ouch.

grouchoben wrote:
I have a theory on GW's balance logic, and why they've gone all 'Exterminatus' on certain units...

Looking at Malefic Lord, Conscripts and Earthshaker Batteries, all three have featured heavily in top table lists recently. All three have been smashed in the face with the nerfbat so hard they're no longer worth taking, compared to their alternatives. Why not just recost them to be balanced?

I think it's because certain players invested a lot into these units in order to have a significant tournament advantage, and GW wants to make these players think twice before investing money and paint on what are obviously overpowered units in the future.

Players might think twice before doubling down on spam, knowing that soon the nasty bat will be out and swinging again. I'm not advocating it as a tactic myself, but it would make sense...

This doesn't seem to make much sense. Ultra-competitive players are pretty indifferent between Malefic Lords at 80 points and Malefic Lords at 60 points. They're not going to use them either way. Likewise they weren't using Conscripts anymore either except possibly with a particular relic (which could have been addressed by errataing the relic to work like the new Commissar rule). The defining feature of ultra-competitive players who invest a lot in order to get a significant advantage in tournaments is that if a unit isn't significantly under-costed then it's worthless to them. Plus Conscript models can be used as Infantry, which are still great.

I still think my theory makes more sense than anything else that's been suggested -- they basically want to strike these units from the game, but don't want the backlash they'd get if they actually removed them. The only serious competitor seems to be: "they have literally no idea what they're doing".

Daedalus81 wrote:

 Esmer wrote:
So Conscripts now cost the same as infantry, but with worse WS, worse BS, worse LD a 50 % chance of refusing orders and no weapon options?

What's the point in taking them, then?

When you want to overwatch with 30 mordians or a wall of meat with the same toughness and save as infantry. There plenty of reasons if you go and look for them.

The Mordian special rules actually work best with PlasGun Infantry Squads, which I assume is what most people will use as their lists' backbone.

The "wall of meat" function can be fullfilled much better by naked Infantry squads now. If 3 Infantry Squads are identical in cost to one Conscript squad, there's no reason to take the latter over the former. Consider having a wall consisting of 30 conscripts vs. one consisting of three 10-man infantry squads: as it stands, having one infantry squad charged and two infantry squads in reserve and then having the two untouched squads fire FRFSRF in your turn (and maybe have the charged infantry Squad GBITF too, if it survived) is a MUCH better pay-off then having a 30-man conscript squad charged, inflicting less melee wounds, losing more guys to failed leadership and then in your turn hoping for a 50 % chance at GBITF.

Yeah, making conscripts 4ppm wasn't on itself a problem, the problem is making them the same cost as normal guardsmen. Normal guardsmen should have been made 5.
Or better, leave conscripts at 3ppm, make Gretchings 2 ppm, and rework Commisars.

But I still believe that Conscripts actually cost 3,5ppm. So GW should make the normal game size 4k points and make everything double the points, to have more room on the low end of the spectrum for balance. Then you can have 4ppm Gretchins, 5ppm Brimstones, 7ppm Conscripts, 8ppm Guardsmen, etc...

I would be supportive of an increase in points everywhere to allow for more balance!

Dionysodorus wrote:
The only serious competitor seems to be: "they have literally no idea what they're doing".

Which, given GW's loooong track record of incomprehensible rules/balance changes over the years and editions, would appear to be par for the course and a natural continuation of their previous work. There's too many inconsistencies in application of what units were selected and the scale of the changes to see any real pattern that shows a consistently applied line of thinking, other than GW *really* does not like Artillery units apparently.

EricDominus wrote:


Dispite all this nerf's Valhalla Conscripts are still *usefull*. Take 3 full squards, add commander with a special relic pistol, that give moral immunity - and move it along the table. If someone gonna shoot at conscript - then thats good, coz that firepower wont power your better units. If someone will charge you - use Valhallan special order to kill everyone, who dares go in melee with you, along with the some of our own conscripts.

Mostly they'll probably just ignore it. It's a big, slow, awkward formation that's going to be difficult to maneuver and isn't packing anything more fearsome than lasguns, and you'd need other infantry units relatively close by to make use of that. Probably the most functional use of conscripts I've seen proposed currently, but that's a lot of awkward coordination of infantry units that aren't really offering much other than physical board control and lasgun fire.

Also, Mordian Conscript blob + sabre defence searchlight + Folley Fire = 278 lasgun shots with BS4+ from one single unit. Ouch.

A Mordian Conscript blob with Volley Fire and FRFSRF (only going off on a 4+ mind you) and Sabre searchlight, at a target that's within 12" of all the conscripts, is putting out 140 Lasgun shots after exploding 6's, not 278 shots, unless I'm missing something? (If I am, please tell me). That's also not one unit, it's at least 3 acting in concert (conscripts, officer, sabre light) that only works right 50% of the time. That's 170pts to kill 7 or 8 Space Marines at point blank range assuming FRFSRF goes off.

 Overread wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
I'm a bit curious about what this could do to Forgeworld sales. Items going from 600 something points up to 2000...that's easily in the realm of "will never purchase", etc.

To be fair if you're going to buy a titan you don't buy a titan just because you want to use it on the table; but to build and own a titan. I suspect its simply GW shifting the titan units back into Apoc and as Chapter Approved has Apoc rules within it there's no need to buy into another rules edition. Titans go up and players get Apoc rules to use them in at the same time.


I think its also about having titans in their own meta rather than having them creeping into more regular points levels whereby they can be more make or break in armies.

Meanwhile gw's own equilavents are untouched when they need nerfing.

This has zero game or balance reason and all abouts margins. Resin is less profitable. Gw is happy to sell those for modellers but want as much money to plastic as possible as it provides better margins so direct all who play game to plastic models.

Simple and gw isn't even trying to hide it

EricDominus wrote:


Dispite all this nerf's Valhalla Conscripts are still *usefull*. Take 3 full squards, add commander with a special relic pistol, that give moral immunity - and move it along the table. If someone gonna shoot at conscript - then thats good, coz that firepower wont power your better units. If someone will charge you - use Valhallan special order to kill everyone, who dares go in melee with you, along with the some of our own conscripts.

You're probably better off with 9 naked infantry Squads if you want the Valhallan human wave now (put in a Brigade detachement, so the number of troops slots won't be an issue). 4-5 of them will easily be in the Commander's BLAM pistol range at any given time, they're more flexible in spreading out (for securing objectives, denying deepstrike and the like), have better shooting and melee and, most importantly, 100 % order reliance. Making the Commander a Master of Command and spending one CP per Round (you're fielding a Brigade so CPs won't be an issue either) will give him an order outpout of 4 per round, and you can give half the squads Voxcasters if you like, so that they can receive their orders from elsewhere.

Also, Mordian Conscript blob + sabre defence searchlight + Folley Fire = 278 lasgun shots with BS4+ from one single unit. Ouch.

Mordian naked infantry squads with guaranteed Volley Fire (by an appropriate number of officers) will do a better job here too.

Dionysodorus wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
It's true - the best way to balance a game is to make everything the same.

But why is it so bad to have the carriage batteries be competitive? What's wrong with having a Basilisk Squadron and an Earthshaker Carriage Battery both being an option for competitive play? Why must the Basilisk always be better than the immobile battery?

I mean, why bother? GW is obviously stretched too thin as-is when it comes to supplying balanced rules for all of the units and factions. Do we really need these three very similar things? Why not just throw out two of them?

Or we could have game designers do their job rather tkan dictate player purchase patterns. Gw doesn't even pretend these are about balance. They aren't. It's all about profits. Don't kid yourself it's about balance. They don't want balance

 Esmer wrote:

EricDominus wrote:


Dispite all this nerf's Valhalla Conscripts are still *usefull*. Take 3 full squards, add commander with a special relic pistol, that give moral immunity - and move it along the table. If someone gonna shoot at conscript - then thats good, coz that firepower wont power your better units. If someone will charge you - use Valhallan special order to kill everyone, who dares go in melee with you, along with the some of our own conscripts.

You're probably better off with 9 naked infantry Squads if you want the Valhallan human wave now (put in a Brigade detachement, so the number of troops slots won't be an issue). 4-5 of them will easily be in the Commander's BLAM pistol range at any given time, they're more flexible in spreading out (for securing objectives, denying deepstrike and the like), have better shooting and melee and, most importantly, 100 % order reliance. Making the Commander a Master of Command and spending one CP per Round (you're fielding a Brigade so CPs won't be an issue either) will give him an order outpout of 4 per round, and you can give half the squads Voxcasters if you like, so that they can receive their orders from elsewhere.

Also, Mordian Conscript blob + sabre defence searchlight + Folley Fire = 278 lasgun shots with BS4+ from one single unit. Ouch.

Mordian naked infantry squads with guaranteed Volley Fire (by an appropriate number of officers) will do a better job here too.

Folley Fire is not an Order. Its a Stratagem. The Stratagem, that you can use once per turn, and only on one unit. And yet again. Tonnes of kill points for your opponent if you go Infantry Squad spam!

 Sim-Life wrote:


Except fluff players don't care because they're playing for the fluff, not to be competitive and the people they play against are generally going to be casual as well and won't put down Guiliman and six razorbacks.

Ah the false idea fluff players wouldn't be happy about balanced game. Actually it's opposite. Competive ones can easily switch army based on power so unbalance affects them less. Indeed for many part of fun is trying to figure out broken armies as part of the challenge. Fluff players have often more reasons to stick to an army

90% stuff we've seen so far is heading in the right direction.

EricDominus wrote:Folley Fire is not an Order. Its a Stratagem. The Stratagem, that you can use once per turn, and only on one unit.

Oops, that's right. Still. You're trading off 1 BS, 3 LD and total order reliance for a highly situational application. Sure, you get one more shot for every 6...but you ALSO lose one shot you would have gotten for every 4 (or 3 with the light) with infantry.
So you have 30 conscripts, shooting with BS 5+ and Volley Fire, with every 6 generating one more shot. Maybe they'll get FRFSRF. MAYBE.
OTOH, you have three 10-man infantry squads with BS 4+, guaranteed FRFSRF, and one of those squads gets Volley Fire on top of that.
It just seems the safer option in most situations.

It really is the identical point cost that's the main issue here. If they had raised infantry squads to 5 pts per guy, as suggested above, but maybe reduced their weapons cost a bit, the distinction would be much clearer. You'd have the conscripts as the cannon fodder horde they are supposed to be, and infantry squads as the more versatile PlasGun/Heavy Bolter operators.
As it stands now, infantry squads are better at both special weapons versatility AND being cannon fodder than conscripts.

Not going to beat the dead horse on Conscripts since its already been mentioned a lot, but why exactly did Guard Melta get nerfed? If anything, I was expecting a points decrease for it, since in most situations Plasma was better even with its nerf on Scions and Vets. I mean, Melta: short ranged, and spitting range to get the roll twice feature. It is something that under most circumstances, Guard can't even take advantage of - dropping Scions can't get close enough to take advantage of the rerolls, Veterans need a transport (which incidentally the cheaper option got more expensive) to hope to get in range. I dunno, just seems like yet another thing that is incentivizing Plasma on Scions and to a lesser extent Veterans, as it is once again cheaper than Melta on them.

On the plus side, Power Fists got cheaper, and I have more Guardsmen equipped with Power Fists than is necessary (I think 3 or 4, though to be fair, one was a converted Steel Legion officer that came in an ebay lot).

 Galas wrote:

But I still believe that Conscripts actually cost 3,5ppm. So GW should make the normal game size 4k points and make everything double the points, to have more room on the low end of the spectrum for balance. Then you can have 4ppm Gretchins, 5ppm Brimstones, 7ppm Conscripts, 8ppm Guardsmen, etc...

Oh yes this! Gw should really have done this. Frankly even better if game size would be 3k

 koooaei wrote:
90% stuff we've seen so far is heading in the right direction.

Totally agree.

Hormagants still cost more than conscripts, they have a worse save, can't shoot guns. They move faster and are better in melee, but the purpose of these units is not to deal damage. Hormagants should cost 4PPM.

There are so many dumb changes in this book that GW has dispelled any notion of most balanced edition ever.

-The conscript change wasn't a nerf, it was an exterminatus from orbit. They should have nerfed the stats, not increased the points. STATS are much incremental to change.

-Meltagun change is insane, few people ever took them. Now no one will.

-Whoever wrote the community page was an idiot because Cawl went DOWN in points, making him more of an autotake than ever while punishing non Mars Forgeworld players.

-Fire Raptors (FW gunboat) is down an insane amount of points.

-GK wargear for FW Razorback and Dreadnought went up 20+ points, because you know, feth those guys.

 Marmatag wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
90% stuff we've seen so far is heading in the right direction.

Totally agree.

Hormagants still cost more than conscripts, they have a worse save, can't shoot guns. They move faster and are better in melee, but the purpose of these units is not to deal damage. Hormagants should cost 4PPM.

Hormies have synapse etc. And as for purpose basic ig troopers do same job as conscript for same price but have better ws, bs, ld, more special and heavy weapons if needed, more flexibility and are better for command points.

Conscripts have no purpose left. Before they were cheap bullet screen. Now even that infantry squad does better

 koooaei wrote:
90% stuff we've seen so far is heading in the right direction.

This kind of behavior is exactly why we ended up with this book.

Let me get it, you are Marine/Death Guard/Wolf Wolfer?

I will bet on the 3rd one. Congrats, GW has given you some bone to chump, clap-clap.

To be honest I believe most of the changes to GW stuff (Not the FW, those were all over the place) were sensible. Many things need more fine tunning like Guilliman, of course, and the change to Conscripts doesn't make sense without making IG Infantry 5ppm.
Some people will say that GK sucks but I don't believe Gk can be fixed by making them cheaper. Of course, they can make them ultra-cheap but then they stop being an elite army. GK should be redone from scratch.

I'll wait 1-2 weeks for the dust to settle after this first days of hyperbole and outrage to see how all this point changes translate in the competitive meta. I'm just tired of people acting like is the end of the world with literally any change GW does. We have have the exact same reaction with all the Codexs and all the FAQ's, everyone loses their minds.

EricDominus wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
90% stuff we've seen so far is heading in the right direction.

This kind of behavior is exactly why we ended up with this book.

Let me get it, you are Marine/Death Guard/Wolf Wolfer?

I will bet on the 3rd one. Congrats, GW has given you some bone to chump, clap-clap.

No need to be histrionic. Sorry if another poster has a different opinion from yours, but I doubt they were involved in writing or publishing Chapter Approved, so why don't you cool it with the accusatory posts unless you are at least going to back them up with something substantive?

 Galas wrote:
To be honest I believe most of the changes to GW stuff (Not the FW, those were all over the place) were sensible. Many things need more fine tunning like Guilliman, of course, and the change to Conscripts doesn't make sense without making IG Infantry 5ppm.
Some people will say that GK sucks but I don't believe Gk can be fixed by making them cheaper. Of course, they can make them ultra-cheap but then they stop being an elite army. GK should be redone from scratch.

I'll wait 1-2 weeks for the dust to settle after this first days of hyperbole and outrage to see how all this point changes translate in the competitive meta. I'm just tired of people acting like is the end of the world with literally any change GW does. We have have the exact same reaction with all the Codexs and all the FAQ's, everyone loses their minds.

Stop trying to bash poor guard back into the abyss! 5 ppm is WAY too much for what guardsman can do. Just stop it.

Actually I have said that Conscripts cost at least for me 3,5 points, and that the low end of the point costs spectrum needs more room for more fine balance. Or you end with things like Gretchins and Brimstones costing the same as a Conscript before the nerf, that don't make any sense. Or conscripts costing the same as IG Infantry. Because when something cost 3 points the smallest change you can do is a 33% change in their cost.

And no, I'm not trying to bash poor guard back into the abyss. Just as in 7th I didn't tried to bash Tau, Eldar and Daemons into the abyss. But I'm not gonna fall for any kind of victimhood, sorry.

To be fair, a guardsman is flatly better than a cultist despite being the same cost.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
To be fair, a guardsman is flatly better than a cultist despite being the same cost.

We could arguee about perfect unbalance, and how Cultists are chaff in a "elite" army, but with 8th ally sistem it doesn't matter anymore.

 Galas wrote:
Actually I have said that Conscripts cost at least for me 3,5 points, and that the low end of the point costs spectrum needs more room for more fine balance. Or you end with things like Gretchins and Brimstones costing the same as a Conscript before the nerf, that don't make any sense. Or conscripts costing the same as IG Infantry. Because when something cost 3 points the smallest change you can do is a 33% change in their cost.

And no, I'm not trying to bash poor guard back into the abyss. Just as in 7th I didn't tried to bash Tau, Eldar and Daemons into the abyss. But I'm not gonna fall for any kind of victimhood, sorry.

More room for more balance can also bring D12, instead D6, but some thinks just never gonna happen...

The only victims here is IG players, and, suddenly, GW (and FW) itself, coz no one now gonna buy hundreds of infantry models. Just a couple of dozens.